1. Rue
Possibly eleven years old, Rue is a long, lean, lithe gray tabby with a pretty face. Her only sign of "slowing down" is that she seems to be trying to tell her humans she's ready to retire from being Queen of a Cat Sanctuary where she's been gently managing a colony of eighteen social and semi-social felines. If you visit, Rue will be outdoors watching for you, and if you hold out your arms, she'll leap into them and sniff at you as if to say "By any chance, could you offer me a place to be alone?"
"She likes you," her humans say to me. "Would you take her?"
I would not. I think she wants a lap of her very own to nap on. I suspect her of thinking she could nonviolently bully Samantha and Serena, both of whom are smaller, into running away, and I'll not have that.
2. Midnight Rose
This spring kitten's human died recently, so, in search of new humans and a cat friend, she staked her claim to the senior housing project, where of course she's not allowed to stay. Project residents enjoy watching her and keep stalling the manager and me along: "We'll send her to the Cat Sanctuary as soon as we can borrow a carrying cage!"
I think she may be a social cat, because she continues to lure a one-year-old male cat away from a private home in the next block, even while off heat. Only social cats bother with that sort of thing.
With humans, she's friendly but cautious. We think she'd accept most of the residents of the housing project as Her Human since Her Original Human was also pretty old...but you know how places like that are.
Her coat is midnight black with one little rosette, not a bib, right below where a collar would fit.
Bonus. Her Friend
"Would you take the male kitten too?" I was asked.
"A male who's bigger and older than our little Traveller?" I said. "Does His Human even want to part with him?"
"She's trying to keep him at her house, but he won't stay. He's going to get killed crossing the main street all the time."
"Have you told her about the neutering clinic that's set up to keep town cats from running through traffic?" I said. We have such a thing. I'm not sure what purpose a neutered male cat serves in this world, since most male cats are poor hunters and...well, anyway, a social male cat is special, and if this little fellow is the one who's persuading Midnight Rose that other cats can be friends, it would make sense for His Human to want to keep him in her home.
Him and a few more cats, because although lonely social cats are fabulous pets, a human is not the same as a friend of their own kind! A social cat whose human goes to work every day most definitely needs at least one congenial cat housemate. There were a few days when I had to leave Magic alone, indoors, while I was at work, and as I walked up onto the porch I'd hear her crying like a baby human. I'm not sure whether even Heather really meant to tell me that the way to live with social cats is "by sixes," but, considering that they miss and mourn one cat friend longer if they don't have others, I would recommend keeping three.
I dislike the Bristol shelter's web site. "The severe cat overpopulation problem in Scott County"? There is no such thing. We have a severe rodent overpopulation problem in Scott County due to lack of free-range cats--though they don't need to be ranging back and forth across Jackson Street in the daytime. We need to defund organizations like this one until they stop parroting HSUS cat haters' propaganda and make contact with reality. Nevertheless, if you need to keep a town cat from running through traffic while you're out at work, this group is siphoning money away from rich urban cat haters and might as well be exploited:
http://www.mbmspayneuterclinic.org/
Neutering male cats is usually simpler and less likely to do permanent damage than spaying females.
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